


The Good of All Kree

by Snickfic



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: (Past) Non-Consensual Body Modification, Angst, Disillusionment, F/F, Fighting As Foreplay, First Time, Hopeful Ending, Minn-Erva Lives, Painful Orgasm, Past Minn-Erva/Proxima Midnight, Pre-Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Rough Sex, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-05 18:12:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19045741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: When Thanos and Ronan and Sanctuary itself get to be too much, Minn-Erva retreats to the training room in the ship's bowels. The thing is, Nebula's always there, too.





	The Good of All Kree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).



> Dear recip, I was so excited to match with you, and your letter was so inspirational that it took me quite a while to pick just one pairing and prompt to write. If I could have written you one of everything, I would have. I had a blast writing this for you, and I really hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I realized quite late in writing this that Sanctuary and Sanctuary II are in fact two different locales, so this is an AU where the Sanctuary is a weird impossible rock formation of a ship. I think it really suits Thanos's whole aesthetic tbh.

Their first night on Sanctuary, Thanos invites the three of them to dinner: Ronan, Korath, Minn-Erva. The rest of Ronan’s forces are cooling their heels on the Dark Aster. “Understand, I’m not worried your men can cause me any real trouble,” Thanos said two days ago, when this meeting was arranged. “I just don’t want the mess.”

Ronan suffered the remark silently then. He says little more now, sitting at Thanos’s table and eating his food. It’s sticky, heavy stuff—nutritious enough, Minn-Erva assumes, or at least unlikely to kill her. Poison doesn’t seem the Mad Titan’s way, although of course if she’s wrong, she’ll only make the mistake once. She picks at the stuff and tells herself she’s just being cautious.

Thanos notices, of course. “And how do you like the savor and sustenance of my planet, Kree?”

Thanos killed his planet. “It’s very good,” Minn-Erva says, and takes another bite. She doesn’t grimace. Diplomacy. 

Proxima watches the conversation from her post at the doorway, impassive. The daughters are all in attendance this evening, Proxima and Gamora and Nebula the cyborg. Gamora looks bored, and she gets away with that somehow. Nebula hangs on Thanos’s every word, which is saying something, because he seems never to run out. 

He’s got some scheme in back of it all; Minn-Erva thanks her stars she doesn’t need to pay attention long enough to figure out what it is. “You would have me destroy _all_ of Xandar?” Thanos asks Ronan. The emphasis is peculiar; Minn-Erva glances to Korath, who’s writing something on a tablet, and then, by reflex, to Proxima. If Proxima feels Minn-Erva’s eye on her, she makes no sign of it.

Ronan is shit at bargaining, Minn-Erva already knows. He names his price up front and never compromises. “Xandar has corrupted the Empire,” he says now. “It must be removed, like a stain.”

“Corruption is a disease,” Thanos says. Ronan nods solemnly.

Minn-Erva takes another bite. The stuff has congealed a bit, now.

* * *

“He’s insane,” Minn-Erva tells Korath in their quarters. They’ve been dismissed from Ronan and Thanos’s after-dinner bargaining session.

“He can help us,” Korath says. “He will cleanse the Kree empire of Xandar’s Skrull infestation, and then—”

“Never mind,” Minn-Erva says.

She sets out into Sanctuary’s oppressive tunnels with the vague idea that Proxima will find her. The last time they saw each other, Minn-Erva got a knife blade in the thigh and then they fucked. She could do with that again: blood across her skin, blood throbbing in her clit, something _living_ inside this godsdamn floating mausoleum.

But she doesn’t see anyone, not even another of Thanos’s uncanny children. Her footsteps echo strangely against the stone floor, hollowly, for this is a ship and not a mine, no matter how it seems to press down upon her. She loses her way almost immediately—she, who was Yon-Rogg’s favorite pathfinder once. Tension cinches her shoulders together, and deliberate breathing can only do so much to relax them.

She turns out of yet another twisting passageway hewn from walls of impossible stone and into a room that feels almost ordinary: lights overhead, walls at right angles to the floor and each other. 

Nebula is there fighting a hologram soldier. She has a knife in each hand, and as Minn-Erva watches, she opens a gash along the hologram’s unguarded side. “What’s the point in fighting something that can’t fight back?” Minn-Erva asks. So much for diplomacy.

Nebula swings her head around to glare at Minn-Erva—probably it’s a glare, but who can even tell when her eyes are all pupil? She holds Minn-Erva’s gaze as the soldier swings its weapon. When the illusory blade reaches her neck, Nebula cries in pain and rolls out of the way. She rises to her feet, and the sound of shorting circuitry follows her. _Cyborg_.

“Any more questions?” Nebula asks. The _stupid_ is implied.

“You want to change it up? Spar with a live opponent?” 

Nebula stares at her. Is that skepticism? Curiosity? Minn-Erva abruptly remembers that she doesn’t care. Thanos concerns her only insofar as he can give Ronan what he wants—what they all want. Thanos’s daughters concern her even less. There’s no comradeship to be found here. “Never mind.”

“I’ll fight,” Nebula says. She twists her fingers, and the hologram disappears from view. “Weapons?”

This was a mistake. “Staffs,” Minn-Erva says, after a moment. The fight is likely to be short either way, so something without a blade seems preferable. 

They square off at the center of the room under the glaring halogen lights. Nebula’s chest rises, falls. Then she strikes. Minn-Erva blocks the blow, and the force of it vibrating through the staff stings her hands. She ducks out of the way of Nebula’s next strike and hits back, overhand. Nebula shifts away easily. She closes in again; again, it’s a strike Minn-Erva can block. “Does Thanos teach his children to toy with their opponents?” Minn-Erva says, swinging her staff.

She’s suddenly on the ground, head ringing. Nebula is leaning over her. Her black eyes are shining and strange. “Don’t speak of my father,” she says. She straightens and walks out of the room without another glance.

“Fuck,” Minn-Erva says. She pushes to her feet slowly and picks up the staff. The shape of it in her hands is long-familiar, and the texture of the wood is warm against her skin. She glances towards the doorway again. She closes her eyes and breathes, staff in hand. Then she begins.

As she moves into the first training form, she hears the echo of a voice from long ago: _Control your breath_. The careful rhythm of inhale and exhale returns to her across decades, for it’s been that long since she practiced these basic forms; they’re for trainees, not for her, not that Yon-Rogg ever agreed. It’s been years since she’s thought of him, either. She exhales harshly and puts him from her mind. She returns to habits of mind long-forgotten, but not lost, after all. She becomes the movement.

“You’re not very good at that,” says Nebula.

Minn-Erva steps out of the form and turns, and there Nebula is, returned from wherever she stormed off to. “Ronan doesn’t keep me around for hand-to-hand. This is just—” Minn-Erva pauses, looking for some better word, but there isn’t one. “Exercise.” And it is: her muscles are looser now, warm with the exertion.

“I’m multifunction,” Nebula says. “My father built me that way.” She watches, perhaps waiting to see if Minn-Erva has anything more to say about Thanos.

Minn-Erva would rather not think of Thanos. “Do you want to go again?”

Nebula snorts. “You can’t win.”

Minn-Erva shrugs. She’s warmed up now, and she doesn’t want to lose that so soon to the chill of this place. “Maybe I’ll last longer this time.”

“I doubt it,” Nebula says, but she goes for a staff anyway.

They square up. Minn-Erva makes the first move, which Nebula easily blocks. Minn-Erva blocks Nebula’s counterstrike less easily. Nebula moves abruptly, conserving nothing, with none of the ideal Kree form but with a brutality that is its own kind of grace. Every breath is harsh.

Minn-Erva lands a strike almost accidentally across Nebula’s shoulder—surprising them both, she thinks. Nebula barely flinches, but in the next move she drives Minn-Erva to the floor with the sheer force of her staff against Minn-Erva’s, and then she hangs there over Minn-Erva’s face. There’s a metallic tang to her breath. Her eyes are as black as space, as full as a vat about to spill over.

It’s easy, leaning up just far enough to close the distance to her mouth. She tastes metallic, too. 

And then all Minn-Erva tastes is blood, because Nebula has bitten her lip. “Ow,” Minn-Erva says. “What the fuck?”

“What are you doing?” Nebula demands.

“You get one guess,” Minn-Erva says. Now her lip will be sore and probably swollen, and Korath will dole out something from their supplies while piercing her with those blue eyes, judging her and finding her wanting. _Insufficiently committed_. “Fuck.” Probably Nebula doesn’t know her pussy from her piss-hole anyway. Probably she got hers swapped out for a spare energy unit—

Nebula kisses her back. Now it hurts, but Minn-Erva can lean into that with the right motivation. Nebula kisses like she fights, brutally and with all her attention. Minn-Erva presses her hand to Nebula’s hip. Nebula stills, and Minn-Erva has just a moment to wonder if she’s about to get her arm broken before Nebula kisses her more deeply.

“Is anyone else going to come in?” Minn-Erva mumbles against Nebula’s mouth.

Nebula pauses. Her hand moves in the corner of Minn-Erva’s eye, and then comes a slow rumble behind her and right through the floor. It ends with a sharp clang. “Not anymore,” Nebula says.

“Good.” Minn-Erva slides her hand up, searching for the hem of Nebula’s shirt. The next moment Nebula’s hand—the metal one—closes around her wrist like a vise. Minn-Erva grins into Nebula’s mouth, baring her teeth. “Do you do anything but kiss, little cyborg?”

“I’m taller than you,” Nebula says, which is absolutely the very last thing Minn-Erva cares about just now.

Still—“You _have_ fucked someone before, right?”

Nebula snarls, which isn’t an answer, and then she releases Minn-Erva’s arm and begins tugging at Minn-Erva’s clothes. That answers the question Minn-Erva was really asking, anyway. Still flat on her back, Minn-Erva unhooks the clasps of her pants and lets Nebula tug them down. Nebula’s finger slides inside the waistband of Minn-Erva’s underwear, questing, ungentle. 

She brushes across Minn-Erva’s folds, and Minn-Erva shudders. Nebula stills, staring into Minn-Erva’s eyes. “Well?” Minn-Erva demands, because Nebula looks like she might spook at any moment, and Minn-Erva’s hot for it now, damn it. Arousal has warmed her clear through, languid in her extremities and thrumming in her clit. “Touch me if you’re going to touch me.”

It’s rough, Nebula’s touch on Minn-Erva’s clit. Minn-Erva’s breath hitches despite her, and Nebula slows again, but she doesn’t stop. She thumbs between Minn-Erva’s folds, over her clit—experimenting. She strokes Minn-Erva just right, and Minn-Erva shudders again. New desire pools in her cunt. “Lower,” she says.

Nebula’s eyes snap to Minn-Erva’s face. She reaches lower, but the angle is awkward; her arm is trapped between them now. She keeps stroking Minn-Erva anyway, down at the bottom of her clit. Aha, she’s found Minn-Erva’s cunt now. Minn-Erva hisses through her teeth and arches against Nebula’s hand. “Put them in,” she says.

Nebula goes still and stares at her.

“I want your fingers in me,” Minn-Erva says. “Is that clear enough?”

“Fine,” Nebula snaps. She sits up and casually rips Minn-Erva’s underwear off, one-handed. Then she stares down at Minn-Erva like she’s never seen pubic hair before. Maybe she hasn’t. She strokes it, brow furrowed in concentration, and Minn-Erva doesn’t interrupt her, doesn’t try to move things along. She lies there and lets Nebula look.

For a couple of moments, anyway. “You were going to fuck me.”

Nebula meets her eyes, and some expression seems to flash across their shining surface. Then Nebula sets her jaw and pushes two fingers into Minn-Erva’s cunt.

“Shit,” Minn-Erva says. “No, don’t—leave them there.” She closes her eyes, takes deep breaths, accustoms herself to the sudden stretch. “Okay. In and out, like you do on yourself.” 

There’s a sound like Nebula maybe disagrees with that description, but Minn-Erva keeps her eyes closed and breathes through Nebula’s next thrust. Minn-Erva reaches down and massages her clit, and yeah, that’s the stuff. A fight to get the blood moving and a fuck after, Nebula breathing almost as heavily as she, Minn-Erva’s cunt slippery with arousal while her blood runs hot in her clit. “Yeah,” she murmurs, to herself or Nebula or the galaxy spinning not so far outside this room. “There we go.” For an instant she is weightless, floating on sensation and potential and nothing else, and then she comes around Nebula’s fingers.

When she comes back to herself, ceiling lights in her eyes, she realizes she’s still half in her clothes, her pants tugged down around her knees, and Nebula is still as dressed as when she walked in. Nebula is staring at her. “I’ll do you,” Minn-Erva offers. She holds out a hand, curling her fingers in invitation.

Nebula pushes to her feet. “You got what you wanted,” she says. It might be a question.

Minn-Erva sits up and tugs at her pants. “Did you?”

Nebula only stares, ever unreadable. Did she have irises once? Sclera?

Minn-Erva doesn’t care. She only wants a reaction. She wants _something_. She says, “I fucked your sister one time.” Or several times, but who’s counting?

“Gamora?” Nebula says, with studied casualness. 

“Not Gamora. Proxima.”

Now she’s earned Nebula’s surprise. “Proxima doesn’t fuck anyone. None of the Order does.”

“Well, she wasn’t always in the Order.” Whatever the fuck that is. Proxima _Midnight_ , _Ebony_ Maw. Like that fad the teenagers had back home a year or two after Minn-Erva joined Star Force: kids running around in elaborate braids talking about endless night and learning Svartalf. Child’s play. 

“And if she weren’t in the Order now?”

“Not really relevant, is it?” Minn-Erva says, as if she hadn’t been hoping an hour ago to run her fingers over those twisting black horns again. “Anyway, I’m not interested in radicals.”

Nebula snorts. It’s a sound like an itch. “Strange company you keep, then. Is he your father?”

It takes Minn-Erva a moment to imagine who Nebula could even be talking about. “ _Ronan_?” she demands, disbelieving.

“Okay, no. Your brother?”

“No,” Minn-Erva says. “Just because we’re both blue Kree—”

“Your—lover?” 

“I am not fucking Ronan,” Minn-Erva says, caught between offense and laughter. “Not everything is personal, little cyborg.” 

“Then why are you here?” Nebula asks. She stares at Minn-Erva with those inscrutable, liquid-black eyes.

The words are already in Minn-Erva’s mouth, long-familiar. Stale, flavorless. “For the good of all Kree,” she says, and waits for Nebula to disagree. Instead, Nebula holds Minn-Erva’s gaze and twists her fingers, and the door rumbles open. Nebula walks out shaking her head.

Korath is gone when Minn-Erva returns to their rooms, so she finds the numbing cream herself. The swelling in her lip is almost gone by the time he gets back, and no one is the wiser.

* * *

Ronan and Thanos have come to an agreement: the destruction of Xandar in exchange for an artifact on some long-lost planet. 

“Why doesn’t he get it himself?” Korath asks. They’re a few yards off from Thanos’s throne. Gamora and Nebula are standing across from each other in a flat, barren space just downhill, waiting for Thanos’s signal. The fight will determine which one of the sisters will join Ronan’s forces as Thanos’s liaison. As a selection criterion, it seemed dubious, but nobody asked Minn-Erva. “Why does he need us?” Korath adds.

It’s the first doubt Minn-Erva’s heard from Korath in a long time. It gives her hope, almost. Anyway, she’s pretty sure she’s already worked this one out. “He doesn’t think we can find it. I don’t think we’re the first people who’ve gone looking. What’s the cost of a planet if you never have to pay it?”

“And if he does?”

Thanos’s throne is floating just behind Minn-Erva and few yards to her right. Is he listening? She doubts very much that he cares enough to bother. “Then they both get what they want.”

“The Empire gets a reprieve from this farce of a treaty, time enough to hunt down the rest of the Skrulls _and_ the traitor.” Korath said this with a relish that made him sound almost like a person.

There was a time when Minn-Erva cared very much about Skrulls and their threat to the Empire. She’s forgotten how it felt. “They’re beginning,” she says.

Minn-Erva thought Nebula’s fighting style was brutal before; now she sees just how much Nebula was holding herself back. These are two of the deadliest warriors in the galaxy, and they fight like they want to murder one another. Their grunts and cries are audible even at this distance. Minn-Erva swears she can hear a bone crack when Nebula throws Gamora into a boulder. When Gamora does the same a moment later, Nebula comes up with an arm bent sickeningly out of sync; it re-aligns as Minn-Erva watches.

It’s a bare-handed fight, or it would have ended in the first thirty seconds. Instead it goes on and on. Green welts rise on Gamora’s skin and Nebula’s circuitry begins to spark. “Enough!” Thanos says at last. The fighters go still. “Nebula, you have once again failed to overcome your sister. You continue to disappoint.”

“Father—” Nebula begins, but Thanos cuts her off with a gesture.

“Gamora, your reactions were sluggish, unimpressive. One might almost think you didn’t want to win.”

Gamora tips her chin up and said nothing.

“You will both go with these Kree to discover the orb’s location and retrieve it. You leave tomorrow.”

Nebula looks as though she wants to protest, but Thanos’s floating throne is already turning away from her.

“With their combined skills, we cannot fail to find the orb,” Korath says.

“Peachy,” Minn-Erva says.

* * *

Minn-Erva wakes as she slept: entombed in dark-grained stone. A little row of blue symbols glowing over the doorway is her only light. She finds she’s choking, suddenly: on the close, stifling air and the essence of death that this place is rooted in and on the prospect of Thanos somewhere nearby, droning still about _inevitability_. The word weighs on her the way the ceiling does, closing her in.

She slips on a tank top and loose pants over her underwear and ventures out through that blue-lit door into the common room. Ronan is there in the near-dark, hands folded between his knees. Slowly his head turns towards her; more slowly still, recognition dawns. “You’re not sleeping.”

“Neither are you,” Minn-Erva says, heart thudding. She knew Ronan was no longer capable of sleep outside the life-pool, but she didn’t expect to stumble across the proof of it at ass o’clock in the morning.

She doesn’t want to sit. She doesn’t want to speak to Ronan, either, but she crosses her arms and says, “What you said yesterday, at dinner—” She stopped, bit her tongue.

“Yes?”

The full weight of Ronan’s waking attention on her is stifling, like this ship. Minn-Erva licks her lips. “We were going to eradicate the Skrulls from Xandar.” These include Nova Prime herself and half the Nova Corps, according to Korath. Exterminate the Skrulls falsely lobbying for peace, and Xandar would readily fall: that was Korath’s pitch to her five years ago. “You didn’t mention destroying the whole planet.” 

“We can’t hope to find them all,” Ronan says, like this is obvious. It should have been. Minn-Erva should have seen this coming, long ago. “They’re vermin. They’ll go to ground.”

“Thanos—” she begins uselessly.

Ronan laughs. It’s an unpleasant sound. “Thanos can’t either. He has raw power and nothing else. He has no—finesse.”

Biting her tongue can’t help Minn-Erva now; only swallowing it can save her from laughing at this declaration from Ronan of all people. She’ll wake Korath, wake the ship, perhaps bring all this stone down onto their heads. Certainly onto hers. She inhales, slow and deep, and out again. “Agreed,” she says at last—still a little choked, but plausible deniability is everything. “Listen, I’m gonna go find the gym, burn off some energy. This place gives me the creeps.”

Ronan glances around the room. “It invites contemplation.”

“Yes,” Minn-Erva agrees, and flees.

The passageways are even darker than before, their lights turned low. Minn-Erva loses herself not a minute from her quarters. Something close to panic pushes her on, but these halls offer no relief from Ronan’s placid certainty, from Thanos’s promise of the inevitable. She turns a corner and collides face-first with—“Proxima,” Minn-Erva says.

“You’re up late,” Proxima observes coolly. There’s no spark of interest in her eyes. 

“Early,” Minn-Erva says. She has no idea what the hour is. “I was looking for the training room. I found it before.”

Proxima searches Minn-Erva’s gaze. Minn-Erva has heard of the Black Order’s mind tricks; she doesn’t know if Proxima has any. What would Proxima even find but a series of increasingly poor choices, a probably-fatal _lack of commitment_? “It’s this way,” Proxima says, and turns. She’s as yielding, as sexual as a concrete pillar. Nebula was right: Minn-Erva will find no evening’s entertainment here. Not anymore.

She escorts Minn-Erva all the way there. It’s a solid five-minute walk, which means Minn-Erva must have gone wrong at the very first turn, and isn’t that galling in a disturbing, existential kind of way? But they arrive at last at the passage Minn-Erva recognizes. Light falls from the doorway, and Proxima’s mouth twitches: a smile, if one were feeling very optimistic and very charitable. Minn-Erva feels neither. “Enjoy,” Proxima says, and turns away.

It’s Nebula inside, of course. She meets Minn-Erva with a glare that could strip paint and detonate bombs. “What do you want?”

Minn-Erva doesn’t know her answer until she says it out loud. “I want a fucking fight.” 

“You don’t want it with me,” Nebula says, already turning back to her hologram. The refusal is a mercy—not one Minn-Erva would have expected from a child of Thanos. 

She aims her kick at Nebula’s knee. 

Nebula barely stumbles; when she swings around, her eyes have no mercy at all. Or anything else, really. Minn-Erva’s feet are already planted, her fists up. It doesn’t matter, of course. Nebula isn’t playing this time, and she has Minn-Erva on her back in three moves. “What’s the matter with you?” Nebula asks flatly.

Minn-Erva laughs—painfully, because Nebula got her in the ribs. Breathing hurts, too. Nebula is heavy on top of her; it’s all that metal and circuitry, no doubt. “I’m an idiot, that’s all,” she says. It’s an admission hard-won and a long, long time in coming. 

Nebula shifts, and Minn-Erva will have to get up, and then—

Nebula’s touching her on the mouth. Nebula’s kissing her. 

Minn-Erva shakes her off. “What’s wrong with _you_?”

Nebula takes a sharp breath and pushes away. Minn-Erva can’t have that. She catches Nebula’s arm and tugs her close again. Nebula’s lips are soft, unlike every other part of her. Minn-Erva catches the bottom one between her teeth. “This is pointless,” Nebula slurs.

Minn-Erva lets go and meets Nebula’s eyes. “You wanna fight the hologram some more? You figure you’ll be less disappointing then?” Nebula snarls, but Minn-Erva holds on, and for some reason Nebula lets her. Minn-Erva kisses her lips again, then her jaw, and then it’s too awkward to crane her neck anymore. “Up,” she says, shoving.

Nebula lurches up and backward, not meeting Minn-Erva’s eye anymore. Minn-Erva rolls up onto her knees and catches Nebula’s flesh hand, and when she’s sure Nebula won’t move, she cups Nebula’s jaw and presses another kiss to her mouth.

“What are you doing?” Nebula asks, almost softly. She holds herself with wary stillness, like prey.

There are a lot of answers on the tip of Minn-Erva’s tongue. None of them are quite honest. Most of them are absurd and melodramatic, though she’s always thought she was better than that. Cynical, clear-eyed. Then again, she thought she was better than a lot of things. She gives Nebula what feels closest to the truth. “I’m distracting myself,” she says.

Nebula huffs softly, a sound that could mean anything, but Minn-Erva thinks it was the right answer: Minn-Erva’s using her, and Nebula understands being used. Minn-Erva leans in and kisses her again, and after a frozen moment, Nebula responds. 

A moment later Minn-Erva teases a moan out of Nebula as she’s pressing kisses up her jaw. It surprises them both. Nebula stills once again, but only briefly, and then she’s gripping Minn-Erva by the shoulders and mouthing along her neck. It takes Minn-Erva a moment to realize Nebula’s licking her. “What the fuck?” she says, more curious than anything. “What are you doing?”

“Tasting,” Nebula says. “I have a modification for it.”

“For tasting sweat?”

“You’re not sweating yet,” Nebula retorts.

Minn-Erva isn’t usually into freaks, and yet here she is. “I want to get your clothes off this time.”

For a wonder, Nebula doesn’t argue with that. She reaches behind her, unhooks something, and slides her vest off before Minn-Erva can put her hands on her. Her bra goes next. Then Nebula is bare-chested and already working at a zipper at the side of her pants.

“Wait,” Minn-Erva says, catching Nebula’s hands. “Wait.”

“What?” But Nebula stills and lets Minn-Erva look.

Just in from Nebula’s left shoulder is the join of metal arm and organic body. It’s excellent work; distantly, Minn-Erva is impressed. The purple stripe down Nebula’s face continues between her breasts and disappears into the wasitband of her pants, interrupted only by a pale, horizontal slit level with her navel—another modification, surely, which Minn-Erva doesn’t want to know about. 

Nebula has great breasts. Minn-Erva never got a chance to notice before, in between Nebula sneering at her and kicking her ass, but she’s noticing now. As Nebula watches her every move, Minn-Erva cups her and thumbs over the darkened nipple. Nebula takes a sharp, gratifying breath. Minn-Erva leans in, hand to the stone floor for balance, and licks over the pebbled flesh.

Nebula puts up with it for a moment and then pushes Minn-Erva away. She curls her fingers in the hem of Minn-Erva’s tank top. “Your turn.”

“Go ahead,” Minn-Erva says. “Leave it in one piece this time, will you? I didn’t bring over a lot of spares.”

“We’re returning to your ship tomorrow,” Nebula points out, but then she focuses on tugging Minn-Erva’s tank top roughly over her head, which saves Minn-Erva from having to think about tomorrow. Except she’s thinking about it now: Thanos on his floating throne, Ronan sitting _contemplatively_ in the dark. Both of them mad. Both of them her allies, more or less. 

Nebula palms Minn-Erva’s breast, pinching the flesh between her fingers. “Hey,” Minn-Erva says. Nebula pays no mind. She sweeps her hands down Minn-Erva’s sides and up again. She’s utterly focused, jaw set with intent. It’s hot; Minn-Erva is willing to admit it. “You ever seen another woman naked before?” Minn-Erva asks. 

“Often.”

“You ever touched another woman before?” It’s half a goad, half curiosity. “I don’t mean in a fight.”

Nebula exhales harshly and brushes her palm over Minn-Erva’s breast again. Then she goes for the drawstring of Minn-Erva’s pants. “Ah ah,” Minn-Erva says, reached for that abandoned zipper at Nebula’s hip.

Nebula mutters something that Minn-Erva’s universal translator balks at, but she pushes Minn-Erva’s fingers away and undoes the zipper. She unzips her boots next, and then she gets to her feet and shoves everything off, so that all she has left is her nondescript, black mesh underwear. She glares down at Minn-Erva, hands curled loosely at her sides. She’s furious, she’s as nervy as a baby oxmoar with legs almost as long, and yeah, apparently Minn-Erva is into all that.

Minn-Erva gets up on her knees and rests her hands on Nebula’s slender hips. Nebula twitches, but she doesn’t move away, not even when Minn-Erva shuffles closer, noses between Nebula’s legs, and inhales. Nebula smells a little sour. The tang of it curls invitingly in the back of Minn-Erva’s throat. She tugs the underwear down, inch by inch, until Nebula is bare in front of her: smooth and hairless even here, and flushed a deep, luscious purple-red between her folds.

Minn-Erva licks right up Nebula’s center, coating her tongue in that sourness. Nebula grips her shoulders to the point of pain. “Good?” Minn-Erva asks, looking up. Nebula nods jerkily. Good enough. Minn-Erva kisses Nebula’s clit and then, on a hunch, she catches it carefully between her teeth. 

Nebula’s inhale is sharp and shuddering and noisy. That could go either way, but she’s holding Minn-Erva’s face between her legs with an iron grip, which seems clear enough.

Maybe someone’s eaten Nebula’s pussy before; it seems like Minn-Erva isn’t going to find out. But if so, they did a piss-poor job of it, because Nebula keeps startling herself every time she makes a sound. Minn-Erva sucks along Nebula’s clit, and Nebula shudders the whole way. One hand ends up in Minn-Erva’s hair; every time Minn-Erva’s teeth scrape along Nebula’s skin or take a pinch of it, Nebula nearly pulls a fistful of strands out by the roots.

Suddenly Minn-Erva’s head is yanked back. “Enough,” Nebula says roughly.

“You don’t want to come?”

Nebula shakes her head sharply. Before Minn-Erva can find a response to that, Nebula kneels and efficiently unties Minn-Erva’s pants. They fall off her hips and pool around her knees, but Nebula’s already moved on; now she’s sliding her hands up Minn-Erva’s ribs again. She leans in and presses her face to Minn-Erva’s neck; Minn-Erva isn’t even surprised when she feels Nebula’s tongue on her skin.

Nebula’s trembling, Minn-Erva realizes. “Hey.” Minn-Erva strokes Nebula’s arm—the metal one, it turns out. Minn-Erva reaches for the other one and tries again. “You okay, kid?”

“What do you think?” Nebula demands. 

She might be talking about this minute or today’s fight in the ring or her whole crapsack life, and Minn-Erva guesses the answer is the same for all three. What a pair they make. “Yeah, okay.” Minn-Erva sits back on her heels and keeps on stroking Nebula’s arm. After a little while, Nebula straightens up and applies her attention to Minn-Erva’s underwear. Minn-Erva sits back on her ass so Nebula can slide the underwear off, and then she spreads her knees. 

Nebula knows her way around Minn-Erva now; apparently all it took was the once. Her fingers trail idly along Minn-Erva’s clit and then behind it. She traces a circuit around Minn-Erva’s vulva, wet with juices; she brings a metal finger up to her mouth and tastes it with a clinical deliberation. Then she plunges her hand between Minn-Erva’s thighs and pushes two of her fingers in.

“Fuck,” Minn-Erva gasps. The stretch is painful. She wants more of it. She rocks her hips into the press of Nebula’s fingers, hissing at the burn. “Come on.”

And Nebula does, roughly, without any pauses or check-ins. There’s no chance for Minn-Erva to catch her breath. After a while Nebula slips a third in beside the other two. Now Minn-Erva is shuddering with each thrust, trying to swallow her cries and not quite succeeding. She reaches for her clit, but Nebula pushes her away and strokes it herself. When Minn-Erva comes, it’s with a flesh hand on her clit and a metal hand in her cunt.

Minn-Erva sags against the floor at last, finished and sore. Nebula withdraws her fingers. Minn-Erva whimpers at the chafing. Yeah, she’ll feel that tomorrow. She drifts, heavy and head-achey with the strange, off-kilter exhaustion of being awake when she should be asleep. It takes her a few moments to realize how still it is. She opens her eyes to find Nebula on her knees, staring at her. “What?” Minn-Erva says. She’s a little sharp about it. She pushes up on her hands, wincing again.

“You like the pain,” Nebula says.

“Figured that out, did you?”

“You’re a freak.”

“Wow, screw you, too.” Minn-Erva’s too tired for this. This all was a bad fucking idea, just another in a long, long line.

She’s startled by the grip of Nebula’s fingers around her wrist. Minn-Erva tugs, but she’s no match for Nebula, who draws Minn-Erva’s hand to herself, against the vee of her legs. “It hurts,” she says.

“What?” Minn-Erva says stupidly. Okay, maybe she’s still floating a little on that afterglow. 

“When I—” Nebula hunches her shoulders, and Minn-Erva gets it. A chill of horror washes over her. Oh, she fucking gets it. “When I come. My father didn’t want me to be _distracted_.”

Minn-Erva doesn’t do sympathy. It used to be she didn’t care to; these days she can’t afford it. It churns in her stomach anyway. Her hand is still tight in Nebula’s grip, the heel pressed to Nebula’s pubic bone. “Nebula—”

“Please,” Nebula says roughly. She lets Minn-Erva go. Her eyes are fixed on Minn-Erva’s face, intent, waiting. Pleading.

Minn-Erva rotates her hand and thumbs across Nebula’s rosy-purple clit. Nebula shudders.

Now, perversely, Minn-Erva wants to make it good for her: an enterprise doomed to failure. Naturally. She gets up on her knees to get a better angle and gets in close, until she’s angled against Nebula’s side. She reaches for Nebula and slides her fingers down the length of Nebula’s clit. Nebula is rigid against her. “It might be better if you relax,” Minn-Erva says.

“No, it won’t.”

So they stay like that, both on their knees on the concrete floor, because apparently Thanos doesn’t believe in any kind of padding in his training ring. Minn-Erva presses her cheek to the top of Nebula’s shoulder and curls a couple of fingers up into Nebula’s slick cunt, listening to the sharp intake of Nebula’s breath. “Tell me what to do,” she says. 

Nebula shakes her head—unwilling or unable, it doesn’t really matter which. Minn-Erva massages Nebula’s clit with her thumb and slowly fucks her with her fingers. That thick, sour smell gets stronger, hanging in the air and in the back of Minn-Erva’s throat. Nebula’s breath grows shakier until each exhale is a soft gasp.

She’s close. Minn-Erva stretches her free arm around Nebula’s waist. It grounds her, even though it probably isn’t going to do anything for Nebula. But then Nebula bows her head and grips Minn-Erva’s hand. The next moment she goes rigid, breathless, silent as she contracts around Minn-Erva’s fingers. 

Her orgasm goes on and on, seemingly endless. It feels like an hour before she sucks in a huge gulp of air and collapses against Minn-Erva, knocking her backwards. Minn-Erva ends up with Nebula half in her lap, shaking and quietly sobbing. Minn-Erva’s nerves are shot, too; she feels shocky and out of breath. She stretches her arms around Nebula and holds her as she trembles.

The moment stretches out far longer than Minn-Erva would have expected. Her heart has slowed down, and her leg is going to sleep under Nebula’s weight. Then, all at once, Nebula is finished. She shoves out of Minn-Erva’s arms and lands on her ass. She’s already scrambling to her feet when Minn-Erva catches her wrist. “That’s what you wanted?” Minn-Erva asks. The words come out in a croak.

Nebula nods shakily. Oddly, Minn-Erva doesn’t see any tear tracks. Maybe Thanos took her tears away, too. “Now we’ve both been distracted.” She tugs out of Minn-Erva’s grasp and reaches for her clothes. She pulls them on while Minn-Erva watches. 

When she pushes to her feet, Minn-Erva still feels although the breath has been punched out of her. “Why do you do it?” 

Nebula meets her gaze and says nothing.

“Why do you stay?”

Nebula shakes her head, dismissive, her interest already gone. “Why do you?” She turns towards the door, raising her hand to gesture it open.

“I’m not,” Minn-Erva says. 

Nebula pauses, her back to Minn-Erva still.

Minn-Erva didn’t mean to say anything. She’s operating on adrenaline, endorphins, and too little sleep; her capacity for rational thought is for shit. So is her filter. “I’m leaving. When we get back to the Dark Aster, I’m stealing a ship.”

“Where will you go?” 

The Empire is Ronan’s enemy these days. It's probably Minn-Erva’s, too. “I have an old friend,” she says, testing out the idea as she says it. “Att-Lass. He’ll help, if I ask him.” She’d have to take back some of what she said the last time they talked, when she decided to work with Korath and Att-Lass didn’t. But he looked regretful, back then. She figures she’s got a chance. Maybe fifty percent. “And if not, it’s a big galaxy. I’ll figure it out.”

Nebula nods, eyes still fixed on the floor.

“Are you coming with me?” Minn-Erva asks. Nebula’s gaze comes up, lightning-quick and full of mistrust. At least, that’s what Minn-Erva thinks she’s sees. Maybe she’s starting to be able to read her. Minn-Erva waits, waits some more, and finally says, “Like I said, I’m not much for hand-to-hand. I could use you.”

“What _are_ you good at?”

Minn-Erva bares her teeth in a grin. She feels buoyant with possibility. “I’m a crack shot, and I can fly anything you give me.”

“My father—”

“No,” Minn-Erva says. She gets to her feet and starts dragging her clothes on. Fuck, her cunt is sore. “I don’t want another fucking word about your father.” She ties the drawstring of her pants. “Tomorrow night, I’m taking a ship from the hangar. Be there or not, I don’t care.” Except she does. She does care. Damn it.

Nebula doesn’t say a word. She watches Minn-Erva go to the solid stone wall where the door used to be, and when Minn-Erva stops pointedly in front of it, Nebula gestures it open. When Minn-Erva looks back, Nebula is standing utterly still, a dark figure haloed by pale halogen lights.

* * *

The next day is tedious, mind-numbing. She spends time in the Dark Aster’s virtual shooting range. Ronan locks himself in with Nebula and Gamora to discuss plans for where to search for this orb thing. “We should be involved,” Korath says, the nearest Minn-Erva’s ever heard him come to criticizing Ronan. “We’re his lieutenants.” He’s right, but guess what, Minn-Erva doesn’t give a shit.

The sleeping hour comes at last. 

The hangar is empty when Minn-Erva strides into it, duffel over her shoulder, pistol at her hip. She’s entirely prepared to shoot her way out; she’s almost hoping for it, but the hangar is empty except for her and the ships. They’re short-range combat, mostly, preloaded with maybe one emergency hyperjump a piece—just enough to get back to the mother ship in case of retreat, useless for Minn-Erva’s purposes. The ship she wants is in the bay at the far end. The whole way, she expects to hear Korath calling suspiciously after her, but there’s no sound at all but the Dark Aster itself, its outmoded quantum engines whining in her teeth.

She’ll never have to feel that particular sensation again. The realization leaves her a little light-headed.

She is alone as she walks into the bay of the little squadron transporter she’s chosen: armed and already provisioned, with a couple of bunks and a hyperdrive of its own. It’ll take her anywhere in the galaxy if she treats it right. At the foor of the transporter’s loading ramp, she takes one last glance behind her. There’s not a soul in sight.

It was a stupid thought. She’s only lucky didn’t Nebula sell her out. 

Minn-Erva climbs the ramp and hits the switch the draw it closed; she secures her duffel and ducks into the cockpit. “Took you long enough,” Nebula says. She’s lounging in the co-pilot seat, a half-assembled blaster in her lap. The rest of its components are spread across the dash.

It’s takes Minn-Erva a moment to find her voice. “I didn’t tell you which ship.”

Nebula’s mouth twists with—could that possibly be humor? “This is the only one in the whole dump worth taking. Are we going, or what?”

Minn-Erva settles into the pilot’s seat. “Oh, we’re fucking going,” she says, and flips the ignition.

[end]


End file.
